Starting Relation
The Starting Relation is the amount of Visible Relation the game starts with between two wizards. The Starting Relation is a symmetric variable, the two wizards involved will always have the same amount of Starting Relation towards each other. Contrary to the name, the Starting Relation can change during the game, and has an influence on it beyond setting the Visible Relation for turn one. Ways to alter Starting Relations Declaration of War immediately reduces the Starting Relation by 5. There is no range checking in this subtraction, so in theory, it is possible to reduce the amount below the lowest possible shortint of -128 which would turn it extremely positive. However, starting enough wars with the same wizard in a single game to reach this is pretty much impossible. The 1.50 unofficial patch fixes this bug. Breaking an Alliance is supposed to reduce starting relations by 20. Unfortunately, this feature is buggy and increases it by this amount instead. The unofficial 1.50 patch fixes this bug. This reduction does have a check that prevents the value from going below -100. There are no ways to improve Starting Relations available in the game, aside from taking advantage of the above mentioned bugs. Effect At the end of every turn, if the Visible Relation is different from the Starting Relation, and there was no Diplomatic Reaction involving that AI wizard that turn, the Visible Relations will slowly shift towards the Starting Relation. This is called natural relations gravitation. The process of natural relations gravitation is the following : # If a random number between 1-105 exceeds the absolute value of the current Visible Relations, continue with step 2. Otherwise do nothing in this wizard relation this turn, and proceed to the next one. # If the Visible Relation is lower than the starting amount, add random(1-2) to it and proceed to the next relationship to adjust. Otherwise go to step 3. # If the turn count is divisible by 10, so exactly once per 10 turns, subtract random(1-2) from the Visible Relations, if it is higher than the starting amount. Otherwise, do nothing. Due to this process, natural gravitation is extremely slow when near the extremes, and when it would happen downwards from a higher current value. It is easy to see that it would take an average of 200 turns to get a single point of reduction from +100 to +99. The unofficial 1.50 patch changes the natural gravitation process to select the random number from 1-140, so the process is still happening at a slower, but now reasonable speed at the extremes of the scale. This ensures no relation gets stuck at -100 (Hate) for an entire game. Additionally, gravitation downwards happens if the turn count is divisible by 3 instead of 10, speeding up the process. Starting Relations at the beginning of the game As the name implies, the players start the game with Visible Relation variables set to the same amount as the corresponding Starting Relation variables. The value of this variable is determined based entirely on the number and type of Spellbooks the two wizards own at the beginning of the game. 1a. If one of the wizard owns Death books and the other owns Life books, relation is set to -5*(Life books+Death books total). 1b. If one wizard owns Death books but the other has no Life books, relation is set to -3*Number of Death books. 2. Subtract 2 for each Chaos books owned by the wizard who owns more Chaos books. 3. Add 2 for each non-Death book the wizards have in common, including Chaos and Life books. 4. Add another 2 for each Life book owned by either wizard unless one of them has Death books. 5. If the result would be below -90, it is -90 instead. The 1.50 unofficial patch changes this process and uses the following formula instead : Starting relation = 2*(Shared books)-3*(abs(Alignment difference)-4) where Alignment = Life Books+Nature Books - (Chaos Books+Death Books) The new formula eliminates the inherent drawback of Chaos and Death realms and the inherent advantage of Life, and gives equal starting conditions in diplomacy for all realms. It also adds an element of Nature and Life realms opposing the Death and Chaos realms. Category:Diplomacy